Spiritual Ecology

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Our back­packs are packed and our fam­i­ly mem­bers are blink­ing back their last tears: It’s time to say good­bye to the Nether­lands again. We will spend the next five months in Chile, where we will work on sev­er­al farms through WWOOF. It may not seem the most log­i­cal step after obtain­ing a PhD degree (Fred­dy) …

I was cycling home this after­noon when I sud­den­ly saw a huge rain­bow, shin­ing over the hous­es. After I had been watch­ing for a while, it start­ed rain­ing and I quick­ly got on my bike again. The trees along the street had adorned the gray tar­mac with bright yel­low leaves. The sun shone on it, …

After a trop­i­cal week it seems like the autumn has final­ly begun here in Gilling­ham. Time for an autumn sto­ry from Thich Nhat Hanh. He tells us that he is in the park, com­plete­ly absorbed in the con­tem­pla­tion of a small leaf. He spents a long time ques­tion­ing the leaf, and finds out that the …

Yes­ter­day I went to a work­shop at St Ethelburga’s, a church in the heart of the City of Lon­don that has devel­oped into a cen­ter for rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and peace­build­ing. The title of the work­shop was “Kick­start a Spir­i­tu­al Ecol­o­gy Hub” — some­thing that I would even­tu­al­ly like to do in the Nether­lands. With about 25 …

I am tak­ing part in a study group about Lauda­to Si, the encycli­cal of pope Fran­cis. We use a study guide from CAFOD, a catholic aid agency. I find the meet­ings very inspir­ing. Here is a short video clip: The movie is a call for action, but this has a spir­i­tu­al basis. The big theme …

Not much has hap­pened on this blog recent­ly, because I have been tired a lot. Last week it turned out that I have a vit­a­min B12 defi­cien­cy, which may explain the tired­ness. I had this defi­cien­cy before and have been tak­ing vit­a­min B12 sup­ple­ments since then, but appar­ent­ly I didn’t take enough. My ener­gy lev­els …